Rabbits: Lower Forms (Relapse, 2/15/11)
Rabbits: “Duck The Pigs”
[audio:http://alarm-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Rabbits_Duck_The_Pigs.mp3|titles=Rabbits: “Duck The Pigs”]Portland, Oregon-based sludge-rock trio Rabbits isn’t big on accessibility. Its music — heavily distorted, brutally noisy — is polarizing, as the extensive catalog of reviews on the band’s website reveals. Its name — generally stylized in all caps — is topped off with an inverted R on the cover of its newest record, Lower Forms. There’s not much of a back story or many illuminating interviews, so a lot of people don’t seem to “get” Rabbits. If you’re in the camp that believes you don’t really need to know the drummer’s dog’s name to enjoy its music, read on, and see what Rabbits and rats have in common.
Why Rat?
by Rabbits
Rabbits sings songs about science. Science, like philosophy (the two are difficult to disentangle and once were one in the same), is about explaining what goes on in the world. How do we explain Rabbits? Tricky. We can tell you this: you would not even be reading about Rabbits right now were it not for cooperation that goes on in the Portland punk and metal scene. All for one and one for all. Why do you think Portland has such a long tradition of sick, heavy, scuzzy, musical weirdos? Cooperation. And science has a lot to say about cooperation.
Once upon a time, a man named Axelrod hosted a contest in a computer. You could send in a strategy to play a game called The Prisoners’ Dilemma. The game is this: Two prisoners arrested for the same crime must each decide whether or not to rat the other out…without knowing what the other will do. The smartest thing to do is rat if you don’t want to get totally fucked, so both should rat. But it certainly would be a whole lot cooler if both kept their stupid mouths shut instead of both being good-for-nothing rats.